Comment by tclancy

That isn’t necessarily true. If you contract, it can be like that, but you’re also under pressure to come up to speed faster than a full-time employee. I’ve done short gigs and worked places for 2, 3 and 7 years and the ramp up is the same. I started a new job in January that I hope to be at for years and my approach was the same as suggested here. Be self-effacing about your ignorance, don’t walk in deciding you know better about X just because of how your last company did it and find pain points that bother everyone but haven’t been addressed because there is no stakeholder to drive them. The upside to being useless the first few months is you can use the time to clean out the Nemean stables or whatever mess is lying around.